Bitcoin (BTC) lost more than 2% on July 4 as a key support line saw its first retest since October 2023.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView

"Spot selling" blamed for latest BTC price rout

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView captured new local lows of $57,885 on Bitstamp after the latest daily close.

A lack of sentiment, combined with steady selling from spot markets, created unsavory conditions for Bitcoin bulls.

Data from monitoring resource CoinGlass put 24-hour BTC long liquidations at nearly $60 million at the time of writing.

BTC liquidations (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

Commenting on the latest price action, popular trader Skew noted that BTC/USD had crossed its 200-day moving average (MA) for the first time in ten months.

“So far since trend rejection & reversal around $63.8K spot selling has been the main driver of this trend,” he explained in part of a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“So in order for this HTF MA to actually act as a systematic trigger for the market we need to see market demand & reversal signs. Else volatility & momentum pick up to the downside.”
BTC/USD 1-day chart with 200MA. Source: TradingView

The 200-day MA sat at $58,400 at the time of writing, still marginally below spot price after a low-timeframe bounce.

Zooming out, trading suite DecenTrader eyed a large patch of long liquidations lying in wait closer to $50,000 should price break down further.

“*If* Bitcoin does breakdown then $51k - $52k remains the area where there is a significant amount of 3x, 5x, and 10x longs liquidity. To the upside, the shorts liquidity is at $76k-78k,” it noted.

Bitcoin liquidation map. Source: DecenTrader/X

A $24 billion sell-off

Charles Edwards, founder of quantitative Bitcoin and digital asset fund Capriole Investments, meanwhile saw clear factors influencing recent downside.

Bitcoin, he argued alongside data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, had been seeing significant sell-side pressure throughout the year. The United States spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which launched in January, had been unable to absorb the fallout.

“This is why we haven't mooned yet. Saylor, Michael Dell, ETFs. It's all noise,” he told X followers.

“When you look at the data of the 4 most important players in Bitcoin, we have net flows equivalent to $24B being dumped on the market in 2024.”
Bitcoin net flows since ETF launch. Source: Charles Edwards/X

Edwards stressed that he did not see the ETFs as the “only demand” in the current market.